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Marc, Rose and Catherine (Rose’s Mum) kayaked down the Whanganui River at Waitangi Weekend. We started from Whakahoro after a long drive in we stayed the night in the old school house there.
We took Marc’s single sea kayak and hired another one from the rental place at Whakahoro, a big mistake. While they were very friendly they lacked any organisation skills, after long wait for them to muck around getting us paddles we finally hit the river. Marc set off at a good pace in his kayak Catherine and Rose struggled in their double one. We thought it would be like a double sea kayak, but it had a single opening, no spray skirts and no rudder. It did have a rudder, who knows why it was removed as it made it virtually impossible to steer. By the end of the first day we worked out that if only the back person paddled we could get it to go straight for awhile.
The first day we spent getting used to paddling in the sun and enjoying the views. The river is generally fairly steep on both sides, with few gravel patches, which can make landing fairly difficult. We discovered this at Mangapapa Campsite where we intended to have lunch, we couldn’t see any way of getting out so had to continue on. That night we camped at John Coull Campsite. There’s a hut there but we deiced we would camp as we thought the hut would be crowded, it turned out the campsite was overfull and the hut only half full. There were several large guided groups on the river at the same time as us.
Day two the sun has disappeared and it was overcast most of the day. We managed to make it down to the Bridge to Nowhere before all the crowds. It’s about a 30min walk in high above the Mangapurua Stream. Just as we got to the rapids before our stop for the night the skies opened up and it poured for about 10 minutes. Thankfully it stopped so we could put our tents up at Ngaporo campsite. Ngaporo, like all the other camping spots, is on a high shelf up the river bank. At 3.30am we awoke to the loud cracking sound, one of the poles in our tent had split. Luckily it wasn’t raining and Rose managed to fix it enough to last the night.
The next day the sun reappeared we had a short relaxing kayak of only a few hours. The guide book had several rapids marked on it, but there was nothing really big. Although it was fun to stop and watch the groups in Canadian canoes come out on the rapids. We stopped for a quick look at the Puraraoto Caves then continued on to Pipiriki. At Pipiriki we swam, read and ate till 3 hours later our car was dropped off to us.
previous travel blog entry
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